demna and guram gvasalia slam reports of vetements’ demise

"To the disappointment of all the haters..."

No one is denying the dominance of Demna Gvasalia. The Georgia-born designer is changing the very meaning of high fashion via dad sneakers and speed runners, turning Balenciaga into a brand possibly cooler (and often harder to cop) than Supreme. In November 2017, Balenciaga overtook Gucci to become the hottest fashion label in the industry. But less on everyone’s lips is the brand that launched Gvasalia to fashion’s upper echelons in the first place. Things have been pretty quiet on the Vetements front in recent months, and Highsnobiety has noticed. Yesterday, the streetwear site published a report suggesting that the brand — founded by Gvasalia in 2009 and designed as an anonymous collective — might be on the way out.

Highsnobiety spoke mostly to anonymous buyers before sounding Vetements’ death knell. One luxury retail worker, also anonymously, reported pretty heavy price-slashing of Vetements stock. As Highsnobiety said, this comes around two years after Vetements “broke the internet” by sending Gosha Rubchinskiy down its spring/summer 16 runway in a soon-omnipresent DHL T-shirt. The brand’s limited production runs were soon feverishly copped by everyone from Kanye West to Celine Dion.

Not everyone is buying the idea that Vetements is dead. Guram Gvasalia, Demna’s brother and Vetements’ CEO, told WWD this morning that the brand is actually exceeding performance expectations, and slammed the Highsnobiety report as clickbait journalism. ““To the disappointment of all the haters, we would like to declare that Vetements is in the strongest creative and financial state it has ever been,” he said. “We are definitely not going out of business and the speculations about our sales figures are not only false and defamatory in its nature but also simply ridiculous.”

Demna echoed his brother’s sentiments in a statement released via Vetements’ official Instagram page. “Fashion is not about hype, nor about useless gossip or opportunistic pseudo journalism, fashion is about clothes. So is Vetements.”